From the right: US Decline’s Now an Implosion
“Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline — until it began to implode,” fumes Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. Large cities are now “becoming uninhabitable,” urban schools are no longer “places of instruction,” and the US “has no southern border.” Meanwhile, “our allies and neutrals are distancing themselves” from us, and President Biden “is on schedule to run up a $2 trillion annual deficit.” The fixes are known, but the “medicine is feared more than the disease.” The country’s in “a similar position” as in “1861, 1929, 1941, and 1968” — or maybe worse: In those cases, “there was at least a president and Congress that identified and reacted to the crisis”; today, “our elected government is what caused the crisis.”
Conservative: The Truth About NPR’s Money
In rebutting Elon’s Musk’s claims that NPR is state-funded, it’s “misleading” for the outlet to “assert” that it gets just 1% of its funding from the federal government, argues Howard Husock at The Hill. “A good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly by federal law,” amounting to $90 million of its $279 million 2021 revenue in the form of federally funded “so-called ‘community service grants’ ” from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s disbursements to local stations. “There’s no doubt that the Public Broadcasting Act created a valuable national news source.” Yet “that doesn’t mean the current funding model should continue, unchanged.” The current “technological landscape cries out” for innovation.
Libertarian: Public Will Suffer for Feds’ Leaks
“Another day, another government blunder used as an excuse to tighten the screws on the public in hopes of reducing the fallout from official incompetence,” groans Reason’s J.D. Tuccille about the aftermath of recent intelligence leaks. After US intelligence agencies failed to notice classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, the White House now wants to expand how government “monitors social media sites and chatrooms.” Panic and concerns about the document leak, TikTok and the use of social media will “feed into official efforts to shift blame for government failings and to expand state power.” Remember, suspected leaker Jack Teixeira made the intelligence community look foolish, and you can never “underestimate government officials’ ability to turn embarrassing moments for them into opportunities to stick it to the rest of us.”
Eye on 2024: Pompeo’s Out. Who’s Next?
“We shouldn’t be surprised” that Mike Pompeo won’t run for president next year: A CNN poll found “one-third of self-identified Republicans” say they don’t know enough about him, notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Only 1% say that about Trump, 8% about Mike Pence and 15% about Ron DeSantis. Sure, the “U.S. has probably missed out on some good presidents because they just weren’t charismatic enough, didn’t have a big enough fundraising network, or didn’t come from a state that is a natural platform for rising to the national stage. But we never lived in that world.” Meanwhile, a third of Republicans also say they don’t know enough about Nikki Haley. CNN didn’t even ask about Vivek Ramaswamy. Mike Pompeo saw “the handwriting on the wall. Will any other prospective Republican candidate?”
Media watch: Lefty Fantasies About Fox News
The “sad, beleaguered competitors of Fox News” would be “happy to sacrifice the First Amendment” to “topple the TV-news ratings king,” thunders The Washington Times’ Charles Hurt. Remember that the lawsuit hinges on Fox News “reporting on claims made publicly by a sitting president. About an election.” That, Dominion Voting Systems alleges, was somehow defamatory. No: “Free speech by a free press reporting on an election is the whole point.” And Dominion’s lawyers have “hilariously” asked that “Fox be precluded from improperly invoking the First Amendment” in its defense. “This lawsuit and the coverage surrounding it does not prove that Fox News is bad or dishonest. It proves the whole reason Fox News exists in the first place.”

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